AITPM@IPENZ Day 3 - Freight, logistics and ... dogs.

Day three of the IPENZ Transportation award and as always with the conferences, people start to feel a bit tired and thinking of all the work that they have left behind.

Luckily there were a few interesting presentations starting with Geoff Dangerfield, CEO of NZ Transport Agency. Geoff presented the work that NZTA is doing to provide for transport solutions for today and tomorrow. He presented the “one network” thinking behind all NZTA actions and focused specifically on freight, where he described the agency’s goal for more freight on fewer trucks.

 

 

Of course he presented the already famous TV road safety ad, part of the wider Safer Journeys strategy.

 

One of the conference streams this morning was dedicated to the Signals NZ user group. The group has recently extended their activities to cover Intelligent Transport Systems to enhance people and freight movement through traffic control and ITS. An interesting fact from the presenters was that in New Zealand enforcement of red light cameras in not yet legal.

The organising committee has set aside some time in the program for delegates to have the chance to go through the “Active Poster Display”. Authors stood beside their posters and gave everyone the opportunity to ask questions and clarify things.

 

Another distinct stream of the day was the presentations of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport a worldwide professional body with presence in more than 100 countries.

 

Finally the day closed with another fairly unique feature, the roundtable presentations. Seven different presentations were set up around tables and repeated three times with a duration of 25 minutes each. That gave the presenters the opportunity to have a true interaction with everyone witch worked quite well for most of them.

 

 

In the case of Jo Draper from NZ Transport Authority was a huge success, where she and her colleague Dean Ingoe from Auckland Transport presented the challenges behind stakeholder consultation on transport projects land acquisition and engaged us in a role playing game that helped everyone understand all the critical factors. As Jo said “when you visit people at their houses, beware, there is always a dog”

AITPM@IPENZ Day 2 - Is it all about perception?

Second day of the conference and it was time for papers, presentations and posters. But the start of the day had a bit of a surprise for all delegates. The fire alarm went off and everyone got out with no problems. The Fire Services arrived at the spot within a short time and it must have been something minor, cause a few minutes later we were allowed back in and the second day of the conference officially began.

 

 

Dr Soames Job from Global Road Safety Solutions delivered a very interesting presentation on the Safer Journeys Strategy. He put the emphasis on speed and stated that speed is “in the heart of safer systems”. He also commented on how we dramatically underestimate the role of speed in serious crashes. He said that all the research shows that when we lower speed limits, crashes go down. He ended his speech by saying: When it comes to speeding; Think publicly – act personally.

 

 

Malcom Douglass and Ron Fisher two of the older members of IPENZ transportation group presented the history of transport in NZ and the role of engineering inheritance. IPENZ celebrates 100 years of presence and the Transportation Group celebrates having more than a 1000 members.

3M one of the major sponsors of the conference had a short but very helpful contribution to the discussion at the conference. Michael Holderness revealed part of a wider research that shows that major improvements to signs can be made by simply cleaning them.

 

Shared spaces was a big part of the Active Travel session. Presenters from Auckland Transport and University of Auckland showed examples where shared space schemes were implemented in NZ.

 

A common theme on several presentations was the notion of perception. Presenters were talking about the perception of safety and about the perception of benefits or about the perceived cost for the user and how projects should include perception surveys. That made me wondering; are we focusing too much on perception?

 

The final presentation for the day came from Dave Ferguson. Dave leads the vision, learning and mapless driving team for Google’s self-driving car program. And while other companies are working on the same research topic that will make us all one day Knight Riders, it was impressive to see a blind person sitting on the driving seat of a self-driving Google Toyota Prius.